are kept at some distance from, and, on the other hand, to contemn what they are familiarly acquainted with. Wherefore, to keep up their esteem with the better sort, even they were only admitted on a few stated days: at other times, neither the greatest prince could purchase, nor persons of the greatest quality any way obtain an answer. Alexander him

self was peremptorily denied by the Pythia, till she was by downright force compelled to ascend the tripos, when, finding herself unable to resist any longer, she cried out, Thou art invincible!' which words were thought a very lucky omen, and accepted instead of a further oracle.'

Thus we see how artfully and triumphantly the priests had managed to enslave this great and most intelligent of people, holding them in abject and utter thraldom even while they imagined themselves free. To the priests they were obliged to come for their original civil constitutions, and these they took care so to frame as to make themselves necessary in every act and hour of existence, as they have done through the universal world. Our author might have told us however, what tricks statesmen were suffered to play with the oracles when it suited them so to do; he might have added what prodigies and portents Themistocles caused to appear in these oracular temples, when he wished to rouse the Greeks against Persia. The arms of the temple at Delphi were shifted from the interior to the front of the fane in the night, as if done by divine hands; they were heard to clash as if by invisible power; rocks fell, and thundered down in the faces of the enemy as they approached these sacred defiles, and friends and foes were impressed with an idea that the gods were present to defend their sanctuaries. These and similar facts he might have told us ;-but let us proceed.

Their sacred festivals, games, and celebration of mysteries, we have already heard were almost innumerable; some occurring yearly, others monthly, so that they were seldom without something of the kind to occupy their attention, and bind them to the national religion. To their mysteries only can we devote a few passages.

Their

These have occupied much of the curiosity of the learned; and their researches have shewn incontestibly, that the mysteries celebrated in all ages and nations were substantially the same. Whether they were celebrated in Egypt, in honour of Isis and Osiris; in Syria of Baal; in Phrygia, in Crete, in Phenicia, in Lemnos, in Samothrace, in Cypress, in India, or the British Isles; or in the Mythratic caves of Persia; they had all the same object, and were attended by the same ceremonies. In Greece there might be differing particulars in the orgies of Bacchus, Ceres, Jupiter, Pan, Silenus, Rhea, Venus, or Diana, yet their leading traits were the same. objects have been stated variously; but they appear, in fact, to have been various, yet all subservient to one great object, which was, to teach the primal unity of the Deity, notwithstanding the popular multitude of gods, and to shadow out the grand doctrine of the fall and repurification of the human soul. They appear evidently derived from the flood; representing a descent into the darkness of that death which Noah's entrance into the ark indicated to the world, and his subsequent return to life. In all, there was a person lost, and sought after with lamentation; whether Isis was seeking Osiris, Ceres seeking Proserpine; or Thammuz, Bacchus, Pan, Jupiter, or some other, was lamented with tears, and sought through terrors, and afterwards rejoiced in as found. In all, the aspirants descended to darkness as of

death, passed over a water in an ark or boat, and came into Elysium. The accounts in Homer and Virgil of the descent of Hercules, Ulysses and Eneas, into hell, are considered to be but details of what is represented in the mysteries. In whatever mode they were celebrated, we invariably find a certain door or gate, viewed as of primary importance. Sometimes it was the door of the temple; sometimes the door of the consecrated grotto; sometimes it was the hatch-way of the boat within which the aspirant was enclosed; sometimes a hole, either natural or artificial, between rocks; and sometimes a gate in the sun, moon, or planets. Through this the initiated were born again; and from this the profane were excluded. The notion evidently originated from the door in the side of the ark through which the primary epopts were admitted, while the profane antediluvians were shut out. So sacred and

secret were these mysteries in all countries, that whoever revealed any portion of them was instantly put to death. The scrupulosity of the Romans with regard to the orgies of the Bona Dea, at which women only were admitted, is familiar to every reader of Cicero, by his harangue against Clodius, who violated this custom. Those who consulted the oracle of Trophonius had to pass through darkness, and descend by a ladder into the cave, with offerings of cakes of honey; and drank of the waters of oblivion to forget all past cares, and of the waters of remembrance, to recollect what they were about to see.

They who had been initiated into the mysteries were held to be extremely wise, and to be possessed of motives to the highest honour and purity of life; yet it cannot be denied that they were made, by the introduction of the Phallic obscenities, a means as much of debauchery as of refining the people. A little

F

reflection, says Mr. Maurice, will soon convince us, that as persons of either sex were promiscuously allowed to be initiated, when the original physical cause came to be forgotten, what a general dissipation-what a boundless immorality, would be promoted by so scandalous an exhibition as awaited them. The season of nocturnal gloom in which these mysteries were performed, and the inviolable secresy which accompanied the celebration of them, added to the inviting solitude of the scene, conspired at once to break down all the barriers of restraint, to overturn all the fortitude of manly virtue, and to rend the veil of modesty from the blushing face of virgin innocence. At length licentious passion trampled upon the most sacred obstacles which law and religion united to raise against it. The bacchanal, frantic with midnight intemperance, polluted the secret sanctuary, and prostitution sate throned upon the very altars of the gods.

The effect upon the vulgar multitude cannot be doubted, however different it might be upon the few of higher intellect and higher pursuit. By them the most sublime portions of the ancient mysteries would be awfully felt. Nothing can be conceived more solemn than the rites of initiation into the greater mysteries as described by Apuleius and Dion Chrysostome, who had both gone through the awful ceremony, -nothing more tremendous than the scenery exhibited before the eyes of the terrified aspirant. After entering the grand vestibule of the mystic shrine, he was led by the hierophant, amid surrounding darkness and incumbent horrors, through all those extended aisles, winding avenues, and gloomy adyta, equally belonging to the mystic temples of Egypt, Eleusis, and India. "It was," says Stobæus, as quoted by Warburton, in his Divine Legation of Moses, "a wide and fearful march through

night and darkness. Presently the ground began to rock beneath his feet, the whole temple trembled, and strange and dreadful voices were heard through the midnight silence. To these succeeded other louder and more terrific noises, resembling thunder; while quick and vivid flashes of lightning darted through the cavern, displaying to his view many ghastly sights and hideous spectres, emblematical of the various vices, diseases, infirmities, and calamities, incident to that state of terrestrial bondage from which his struggling soul was now going to emerge, as well as of the horrors and penal torments of the guilty in a future state. The temple of the Cecropian goddess roared from its inmost recesses; the holy torches of Eleusis were waved on high by mimic furies; the snakes of Triptolemus hissed a loud defiance, and the howling of the infernal dogs resounded through the awful gloom, which resembled the malignant and imperfect light of the moon when partially obscured by clouds. At this period, all the pageants of vulgar idolatry-all the train of gods, supernal and infernal, passed in awful succession before him; and a hymn, called the Theology of Idols, recounting the genealogy and functions of each, was sung: afterwards the whole fabulous detail was solemnly recanted by the mystagogue; a divine hymn, in honour of ETERNAL AND IMMUTABLE TRUTH, was chanted, and the profounder mysteries commenced. And now, arrived on the verge of death and initiation, everything wears a dreadful aspect; it is all horror, trembling, and astonishment. An icy chilliness seizes his limbs; a copious dew, like the damp of real death, bathes his temples; he staggers, and his senses begin to fail, when the scene is of a sudden changed, and the doors of the interior, and splendidly illumined temple are thrown wide open. A miraculous and divine light